Breaking Into Affiliate Marketing – $0 To Six Figures Overnight

Given I’ve been blogging for two years I’ve had hundreds of people email in, instant message, and even ask me in person what is the “easiest way” to break into the affiliate marketing industry. With young guys like Mark Zuckerberg becoming billionaires before the age of 30, many other young Entrepreneurs feel the Internet is something that can be exploited to make a lot of money. Literally with affiliate marketing you can take your income from $0 to over six figures a year over night all from your home computer. I personally was making over $100,000 a year before I had a drivers license; much less a completed high school education.

However before I go any further I want you to understand something. The Internet provides such lucrative opportunities because of scalability. With the amount of Internet users growing at a rapid amount daily and new technology constantly emerging making access more convenient (ie: smart phones and tablets), the amount of opportunities is almost endless.

Now you have to understand that if it was incredibility easy everyone and their brother would be working from their home computer and would have no need for a 9-5 job. Just because an Internet business can be started with low start-up costs, the barrier of entry isn’t always wide open. Competition, regulations, and changes happen on-the-fly and you have to constantly Adapt, Develop, and Progress (A.D.P.).

With all that said the first step to starting a career in affiliate marketing is to monetize traffic. Without traffic you can’t pitch offers. It’s just like owning your own bakery or any other “bricks and mortar” business. You can bake the best cakes or sell the coolest products, but without people coming in every day to buy, the business is worth nothing.

On the most basic level traffic can be generated two ways: paid and organic. Those that have money to invest can purchase traffic from sources such as Google Adwords, Microsoft adCenter, and Facebook to almost instantly start a constant stream of traffic. Those that don’t have a lot of money to invest can generate traffic through search engine optimization (SEO), emailing, and social media. Here are some of the ways I recommend for people just starting out:

* Purchasing advertising on social media platforms such as Facebook and Plenty of Fish and then direct linking to affiliate offers.
– Believe it or not there are some people who have hit a “home-run” from the beginning by creating advertisements and direct linking to offers such as dating. With Facebook and Plenty of Fish all you need is a creative that garners a high click through rate (CTR) and you can begin delivering traffic to an affiliate offer without ever having to open up a HTML editor. Sure as things progress tracking and other aspects must be taken into consideration however it will take some time and patience to understand exactly of the platforms work and what it takes to get people to start clicking.

* Generating traffic through organic methods such as Facebook fan pages, search engine optimization, and other interactive platforms (ie: Squidoo Lenses).
– With the creation of Facebook’s fan pages once connected with enough people traffic can be generated for free. The challenge here is to create a fan page or web page that others are interested in. Advertisements aren’t cool. How many times do you set your DVR to record your favorite show so you can fast-forward through the commercials. When trying to generate traffic this way you have to first think what is “cool” that people would be interested in and who could you eventually begin the monetization process. Creating a Facebook fan page with a common interest and inviting your friends to “like” is just one of the ways this can be accomplished.

Setting up online profiles such as a Squidoo Lense that appeals to a mass audience is also another option. Anything that can grab the attention of someone and get the user engaged is the very start of the monetization process. With a bit more experience some people can setup websites and begin ranking in search engines for terms with lots of volume and low amounts of competition.

The biggest reason a lot of people fail at affiliate marketing or making money online in general is they simply give up. There is no guarantee you’re going to make money. Sure some people get lucky from the beginning but the fact of the matter is that it does take some trial and error to understand what works and what doesn’t. You can read everything Ruck and I type but without taking action and becoming experienced you’ll never sustain a consistent stream of online revenue. The Internet provides many exciting opportunities but should be treated with the same mindset as any other business.

I have decided paid traffic is where it's at for me I have made around 10 campaigns and like you said it takes money I have spent around 3 grand just to bring 4-500 back I have finally reached the point where I get close to breaking even now I just need to keep messing with things to improve CTR…good post!

To be honest I really didn’t tell anyone. Money was just a bonus I just did what I loved just as many of my friends would play video games or go to the mall. Didn’t want people to think of me differently so just kept it quiet 😉

direct link fb ads ftw ….. so many people think you need landers for everything .. you don't. As a rule of thumb that I have found … for most traffic sources and short form leads such as dating sign ups, email submits, daily deals, etc … you can direct link. Larger sale items, where someone has to put in there CC you will need to create a lander for and really convince the person to pull out there wallet.

One of the best posts of the year, it really is all about scaling. People just pigeon hole themselves into saying "Fb doesn't work" and give up… wayyy too soon. Every single week I launch at least one new project or campaign, just to keep sharp and to keep SCALING
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Nice info for newbies. But the rest of us know that getting through FB censorship and banning, dying campaigns, high click prices and super-low CTR can be very frustrating. But you're welcome to show us a real, profitable campaign any time…

I'm looking in to all of this, very interesting and fair play to you for doing so well at such a young age. I was making a few quid with an online shop selling consumer electronics when in college, and had found that I pretty mucg exactly broke even with my paid advertising, for each £5 I made in clear profit before advertising I spent £5 paying Google to get me the clicks. Cheers for the post, bookmarked your site.